


The Creeping Black Doubt

by snowshus



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), implied Martin/Jon, implied Martin/Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:53:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowshus/pseuds/snowshus
Summary: Statement of Peter Lukas on the circumstances of his choice to leave the Magnus Institute
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: Writing Rainbow Black





	The Creeping Black Doubt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CousinShelley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CousinShelley/gifts).



_Statement of Peter Lukas, given 23rd September, 2018 upon his quitting the position of head of the institute._

Sometimes someone comes along that makes you...doubt. The chances of it are one in a thousand, but it’s been known to happen. I hear that's what happened to the desolations grand plans. Their messiah, She Who Burns or whatever dumb name they called her - Agnes, fell in love or at least grew fond and suddenly she didn’t want to end the world anymore, not if it meant his eternal suffering. 

That’s what happened to Evan too, you know? He was supposed to be recruiting her for us, Naomi-you’ve met I believe. She’d have made a wonderful addition to our family. So comfortable in her loneliness. You know how it is Archivist. We all have the fear that speaks to us - the one where the line between terror and elation blurs. 

But no, Evan liked her. Evan loved her and he wanted to protect her from us, from what he had planned. So he opened up his heart for her. Congenital heart disease is what they called it. They couldn’t figure out how a tear had suddenly opened up in the right atrium so they decided it must have always been there. We got him back in the end, buried him in our family plot where she will never come visit him. 

You weren’t asking about Evan though. That's the downside of working for the Eye - no straight simple answers. Instead you get lots and lots of context - the whole ugly story, every unimportant little detail spilling out. What was the question again? Right, why am I leaving? 

I have been having...doubts. 

He’s quite remarkable, isn’t he? Your Martin. I thought, the first time I met him--you were gone, I forget why and the loneliness just rolled off of him. I thought he’d be easy pickings. No one had ever really loved him, you know? Not his mother, not his father, not even you, not then. People like that, people who don’t have anyone to hold onto, they just need a whisper usually. It just takes the gentlest of pushes before they’re falling down our path, feeding that fear of never being noticed, or wanted, or loved. They get so desperate they’d do just about anything.

Martin did, for the most part. He certainly let me do to him things that only the very lonely ever let you get away with. I’m sure some of it got recorded if you’re interested and let’s not pretend you aren’t. If you go through the office once I’m gone you’ll probably find the tapes. Or you could compel it out of him. That might be more fun for you, getting to hear not just what happened but how it made him feel, how lonely and empty and meaningless I made him feel.

I thought for sure I had him, especially after I procured his mother’s death. He had nothing then, no one in the world to care for or who cared for him. Maybe if you’d stayed in your coma another month I would have. Or maybe he was never going to. Maybe he was always strong enough to resist or maybe I was already....It didn’t seem to matter is the thing. No matter how much I isolated him, no matter how empty I left him feeling, no matter how often I brought up that pathetic crush he had on you, and how everyone knew and was laughing at him, how they pitied him for liking someone who would never like him back, he never stopped. Loving you I mean. It was...I worked on his feelings for you a lot. I made sure to remind him, often, how stupid he was for devoting himself to someone like you. I was the best he could hope for, no one would ever really love or want him or even just want to use him the way I was using him. Especially not you. That’s one is not even really a lie. That helps it stick, when it’s mostly true. When they can’t argue with you. I guess he didn’t care, whether or not you loved him back. He loved you and that was enough for him. He was willing to do anything I pushed onto him to protect you, with no hope of recognition. And I know I’d done a very good job of destroying any hope he might have had for you.

It was just stubbornness really. He didn’t want me to win. I found myself, I suppose, admiring that willingness to bare himself to the unending, unnecessary pain of a love he had no hope for just to spite me. And I didn’t want...when I was with him...it was quiet and I…I’ve been having doubts.


End file.
